Published: 06-16-2009

Views: 30,361

Dr. Candy Olson graduated from veterinary school in 1978, and has been working as a small animal veterinarian ever since. She started her own practice, Greenbriar Animal Hospital, in Fairfax, Virginia in 1993 with a goal to providing a very personal level of service, like an old fashioned family doctor’s office. The hospital has grown into a busy 2 doctor practice with a full time dog and cat groomer. The practice and Dr. Olson have received several awards for top quality service to her patients and their owners, but what she enjoys the most is fine tuning the day to day care of her patients, and helping their owners cope with medical and behavioral issues that pop up in today’s lifestyles.
Dr. Olson is particularly interested in the care of geriatric pets and in pets with multiple medical and/or behavioral problems. She keeps her veterinary knowledge current by reading more than 8 veterinary journals every month, and by attending more than 80 hours of continuing education meetings each year (Virginia requires 15 hours per year). She also serves as a mentor for student veterinary technicians and high school students interested in veterinary medicine.
Her hobbies include gardening, travel, and photography (photography is an extended family hobby). Some of her photos and some of her family’s photos are framed and on display at the animal hospital.

Hi, I am Dr. Candy Olson from Greenbriar Animal Hospital. Were shooting a video on tips on how to take care of your cat at home. This particular section is on how to do eye medication and clean your cats eyes. This is Punkin, she is going to be helping us out here. One of the important things about doing eyedrops for your cat, and drops are a lot easier than anything else, so if you have a choice, you want to ask for drops rather than an ointment. One of the important things about it is you dont want to come at your cats from the front, thats kind of scary for them, instead come out from behind. What you want to do with this, and you have to be careful that you dont touch the tip of the bottle to anything, so what you want to do is actually rest the hand holding the bottle on her head. You can use your hand if you need too, to open the eye a little bit. You dont even have to get all that close, there are lots of drops in here. For cats, the less you hold them the better, so notice, Im not really trying to hold on to her or anything, but you can if you need to, and she is fussing just a little bit here, being very polite. But you can do is just gently hold her scruff, and do the same kind of thing here. Again, you want to come at her from behind, so she barely sees the bottle.

Eyedrops for cats are usually very soothing, and so they dont mind the actual medication. Its the whole idea of your putting weird stuff in my eye thats a little strange. If you need to clean your cats eye, the best kind of thing to use are these little disposable one use eyewash drops that they have for people. You just pull the tip off, you do the same kind of thing that you do with the drops, except this one is a whole bunch, so you squeeze the whole thing in, you can see, it just runs right down her face. Then you just want to take a plain dry tissue and just wipe across the eye. You dont ever want to rub on the eye just because you can injure the eye itself. Now, sometimes your veterinarian may prescribe an ointment. Ointment is trickier for the eye. First of all, its sticky and you have to get closer to the eye to apply it. I recommend if youre doing ointment and you havent done it before that you practice with it a couple of times. What youre going to want to do is squeeze out a little bit, thats about a little half inch piece, about like that, and then let it drop off. You can see theres some still coming out here, but it tends to stick. Same thing here though, what you want to do is come at her from behind. Theres always extra in the tube, you noticed she gets a little bit in her eye, and then Im just going to wait. Then it helps if you massage her face a little bit afterwards, because that spreads the ointment around. Also, if she shakes her head or flips at it little quick, the ointment is not going to go flying off. But, the ointment is a little trickier, it does help to have your tissue there so that you can set this down without touching the tip to anything, so you dont have to stop and put the cap on right away. The next thing were going to talk about is microchips for cats and why you should get one, and what they are?

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